California Credit Union Sees Card Success from Widespread Overhaul

The 60,000-member, $690 million CoastHills Federal Credit Union said it has improved its card program on a wide variety of fronts after implementing several different marketing and management strategies.

As of the end of 2012, the Lompoc, Calif., credit union had a portfolio of more than 12,000 card accounts with outstanding balances of $28.8 million.

The credit union processes its card payments on the FIS platform and drew upon Card Services for Credit Unions, the association of credit unions that process on FIS, for assistance with the changes.

The credit union reported it had year-over-year growth in all areas of its card business, including account base growth (31%); total outstanding growth (22%); volume growth (42%); and overall revenue per account growth (32%).

In particular, CoastHills reported success with a program that helped motivate staff to cross sell its credit card and by adding rewards to both its credit and debit cards.

CoastHills used a CSCU-developed approach to incent its staff to cross sell and open 1,500 new card accounts and to see its record of cross selling attempts climb from 28 in 2011 to 3,000 in 2012.

“By using CSCU’s promotions in tandem, our well-managed card portfolio has proven to be a revenue generator and has helped position us for substantial growth,” said Joe Mayhew, consumer loan manager at CoastHills.

“We’ve used these marketing resources as tools to educate and reenergize our MSOs and incentivize them to focus more heavily on member engagement,” Mayhew said.